The telecommunications industry is in the midst of change due to the rapidly improving cost and performance capability of network components. Early telecommunications systems were highly centralized and provided simple services. Today telecommunications networks (the Internet being an example) are highly distributed, flexible, and provide a variety of services.
Wireless communications continue to gain in popularity, but wireless communications are constrained due to a lack of available, interference free spectrum that may be used for reliable communications within a geographic area. A leading cause of the lack of available spectrum is the manner in which spectrum has been historically allocated. Since the early days of radio and telegraph transmission, the available radio spectrum in the United States and other jurisdictions has been carved up by regulatory agencies into discrete bands or channels. Use of spectrum bands has been restricted to certain types of users or certain licensees. Because many of these bands were allocated at a time when technology was very primitive and data rate requirements were very low, the bands were not allocated in an efficient manner for current demands. It is contemplated that spectrum would be allocated in a much different manner if it were reallocated without regard to current allocations. Also, organizations and enterprises have been granted exclusive use rights for spectrum that they are not utilizing to the spectrum's fullest extent.
In the U.S., for example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licenses spectrum in a primary spectrum market to commission licensees. As an example of current spectrum allocation, FIG. 1 shows a portion of the current U.S. frequency allocations at 2.5 GHz. As can be seen in FIG. 1, plural bands of various frequency ranges have been established and each of these may be allocated to a corresponding commission licensee or reserved for government use. It is noted that regulations specify that stations operating in the 2568-2572 MHz range and the 2614-2618 MHz range are secondary to adjacent channel operations, may not cause interference and must accept interference from other stations.
A secondary market exists for the commission licensees to sub-lease spectrum for use by other parties. Conventional secondary market leases involve the wholesaling of a spectrum holder's spectrum to another party. This is a one party to one party transaction in which use rights for an entire monolithic block of spectrum is transferred.
As a result of this historic allocation and the significant difficulty in re-allocating the spectrum, a number of initiatives have come about in order to try to optimize spectrum use. On May 19, 2003, under FCC order number 03-113, the FCC began an investigation of “smart radios” or “cognitive radios” that could make better use of the spectrum. In 2004 the FCC issued a further order (FCC 04-167) that describes the concept of secondary use of spectrum. That is, a radio user could make use of someone else's spectrum band if the primary license holder is not currently using the spectrum and the radio user could guarantee not to interfere with the primary license holder's operation. However, operation is currently restricted to FCC Part 15 operation in peer-to-peer (P2P) mode, which precludes many valuable service alternatives. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to allow this secondary use concept to become a reality. These proposals range from databases that describe local use and advise a radio of what spectrum is available, to cognitive radios that can “sniff” out unused spectrum to use.
But there remains significant resistance to these secondary use proposals from current spectrum license holders on two fronts, especially due to the potentially non-deterministic behavior of a cognitive radio. First is the fear that the license holder cannot police the secondary users to ensure there will be no interference. Second is the perception that license holders are “giving away” rights to use a valuable resource, as the license holder's spectrum is a resource that the license holder may have paid millions or even billions of dollars for the right to use.
As such, there remains room for improvement in the manner in which spectrum use rights are temporarily transferred from one party to another.